Youtube content

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Hi all, when I search for video in Youtube, almost all of them can’t be watched in WD Tv Live because of content blocked to device connected to tv , I’ve pages and pages of blocked video …

There is a way to enable it, other than install a custom firmware ?

Or at least hide video WD can’t play ?

Thanks

2

If you have an iPhone there is an app called Zappo TV that will allow you to select youtube content and push it to the WD box.

3

Hi Scandy, it’s an application that search for content that can be played without limitations ?

This is something that WD should be able to do itself …  seems not a hard job.

I don’t have an IPhone, but it’s a workaround and someone in forum could be interested … thanks for your reply.

4

marcofive wrote:

Hi Scandy, it’s an application that search for content that can be played without limitations ?

This is something that WD should be able to do itself …  seems not a hard job.

I don’t have an IPhone, but it’s a workaround and someone in forum could be interested … thanks for your reply.

 

 

The WD is working as it should do, it’s youtube who are blocking the content for you.

B-Rads firmware has got round it twice now but I bet it won’t be long before youtube block it again, If WD started cracking youtube blocking - well think about it, how long would it be till the plugin is taken away from them?

5

Nope … WD must only hide content that can’t play … or user have to browse pages of useless links …

1 Like
6

I don’t think you understand. Whereas brad’s firmware is “underground” and can do whatever it likes, WD is a large legitimate company that has to play by “the rules”. YouTube has a license agreement allowing the WD to use a plug-in to access their content on the machine. While I’d love to see this as much as yourself I just don’t see it happening. Another thing 'd mention is that have you noticed how the WD YT plugin uses the “5 stars” rating system which I think YouTube stopped using a year or two ago, replacing it with the Like/Dislike buttons? This plugin is not exactly a priority it would seem.

7

I understand that WD has to follow the rules but I don’t understand why show links to media it can’t play.

Maybe the reason could be that WD don’t have any control on search results … but seems to me that other players on the market have this feature, so it should be possible filter the output in some way … 

Probably WD don’t care about this feature.

8

The issue, as far as I understand it, is that the API (that WD paid to be able to use – Popcorn refused to pay and could no longer use the API) doesn’t have anything returned in the search results to flag which videos can’t be played on a TV-connected device (as far as I can see).  So, a WD device can’t know that a particular video can’t be played until they try to access it through the API.

Devices that use Flash, instead of the API, can try to sneak around all of Google’s rules (but that’s also part of the reason Google changed their conditions – they assert that Popcorn had been illegally accessing YouTube content for several years), but WD is probably not willing to risk legal action, and wants to do everything by the letter.

What Google should do is have “I’m searching from a TV-connected device” be part of the search string that API users submit, so that Google itself can filter the search and only return results that are actually playable.

9

YouTube results on an iPad (and I’m assuming other iOS devices) are filtered to exclude unplayable content.

So it’s do-able.

10

But the iPad isn’t classed as a TV-connected device, is it?  So, although it’s filtering out “unplayable” content, it’s not filtering “not-playable-on-set-top” content, is it?

I thought the iPad issue is that the Mobile devices (m.youtube.com) is a separate set of videos – not everything on the regular website is available for mobile devices – so it’s not Apple filtering iPad results, but a different database providing different search results.

11

Not sure about device classifications, but content that won’t play on the Live units is also unavailable on the iPad.

Example, search for “rhianna” and the top link is “Only Girl”, followed by other music videos from the RhiannaVEVO channel.

The Live displays all of them and plays none of them.

The iPad displays none of them.  I believe that since it can output to a TV, it may also be classified as a TV-connected device.

-edit-

The iPad can view m.youtube.com but I’m searching with the built-in app, that I assume uses the same API as the Live.  I really don’t know for sure though.  I’ll see if I can dig up more info.  :)

-edit 2-

I think you’re right, RG:  the iPad has access to HD content, so it’s not the same API as the Live; the iPad must be using the m.youtube.com API.

1 Like
12

But that’s just it… if you do a search on " www.youtube.com" for “emimusic” you get 233,000 results, including over 8100 videos from the user “emimusic” as official uploads (eg. the official Iron Maiden channel), with a handful of search results being other videos that happen to contain “emi music” as part of the title (most of them seem to be playlists that include video(s) from the “emimusic” channel).

If you do the same search for “emimusic” on “m.youtube.com” (where mobile devices connect to) you get 5,130 results, with almost none of them being from the “emimusic” YouTube member/channel… the database for mobile devices is not the same as the database for computers and tv-connected devices.

Therefore, most of EMI’s uploads to YouTube do not show up in a search done by a mobile device.  Almost none of the EMI-uploaded videos are available for playing from a mobile device.

The EMI uploads do show up in a search on a computer (and on the WDTV).  It’s just that EMI has flagged most of them to not play on the WDTV (and other TV-connected devices).

So it seems like the “filtering”, with respect to the iPad, comes from what database is being searched, and has no bearing on what videos are also flagged to be blocked from TV-connected devices.

EDIT:  Seems you edited while I was typing that diatribe :wink:

13

haha yes, I edited my post a few times, sorry.  ;)

So, short version:  filtering likely needs to come from YouTube’s end.

The API documentation I found had NO references to filtering out syndication.  If the API doesn’t provide it, I don’t see how WD can implement it…

14

Now the problem is much clear …

Probably it’s time to think about a computer rather than a media player connected to tv …

Thanks to everyone for the reply …